People with food sensitivities/allergies 100% do not like mysteries.
It’s no fun at all to sit down at a restaurant and be handed a menu on which there is exactly zero that you can eat.
These are the same kitchens that will refuse any request for accommodation, even as simple as omitting a sauce or a layer of cheese.
Hard no here.
I need to know the price range before I go. I also need to know if there several dishes I would enjoy eating since I rarely eat meat. And if our son is with us, that there is something he will eat.
And before someone decides I need a lecture about my poor parenting and my son’s limited food preferences, please understand that he experienced major food deprivation/trauma as well as a lot abuse and other trauma before we adopted him at age 7 from foster care.
As someone else mentioned, in the US areas I lived (San Francisco Bay area, Boston, New Haven, CT) the yellow pages included menus for many restaurants and in Boston, there was an annual publication that included actual menus along with all the other information that is now included on websites, as well as parking and mass transit information. And there were guidebooks that didn’t have actual menus but include a short description of the food and price ranges.
One of our favourite bistros had a Trust Me set menu dinner for about 2 decades, as well as their regular menu.
Now they have a 2 or 3 course set menu, but it’s no longer a Trust Me.
We always liked the Trust Me dinner. The server would ask about food aversions and allergies before we ordered.
Before the internet came along, I used published reviews or word of mouth. Or, when visiting an area, reading menus that were posted outside establishments (or in Yellow Pages, as noted above). Or the restaurants were something more general, like a New England style pizza and grinder place, where there was a expectation about what should be available most of the time. My sister was diagnosed with over 50 allergies as a child, many of which were food. So, surprises were not acceptable. Fortunately, she’s managed to be one of the folks who outgrew most of them.
Now that restaurants have the ability to post, at the very least, sample menus I have very little interest in visiting a restaurant who does not provide this for potential customers. That being said, I am actually less picky about this at sushi restaurants that have otherwise good word of mouth, mostly because I know I will be able to be able to eat the majority of the menu. It’s a little more fraught if I am bringing BF - who will eat something like a fried shrimp head or deep fried fish bones if they are put in front of him, but would rather not if he has the choice (this came up during an omakase once at a place that does not publish its menu in San Diego).
I always said that if I hit the lottery in a big way (eight figures or more), I’d quit my job and open up a lunch-only place downtown. I would make a different thing every day, but only that one thing, and the choice was take it or leave it. I would only charge enough to cover costs, and would close either at 2pm or when all the food was gone. I even had a name: The Mush Room. Not because I love mushrooms (which I do), but because the business plan, such as it is, came to me while I was making polenta.
I never hit the lottery, so the Mush Room never came to be. 
I love that idea. There’s a couple of places in Berlin that serve ONE menu, no substitutions.
The Dallas hotel where my PIC was staying had exactly one breakfast meal to offer. You either ate it, or you didn’t.
Maybe not quite that old 
We had a tradition that everyone got to pick a restaurant for a birthday dinner out based on newspaper reviews or a local foodie newsletter called A Gourmet’s Notebook.
Browse the collection here and marvel at 80’s prices
https://cdm16118.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16118coll30
I first visited the States in 1980 and have often done road trips well away from the touristy areas, not knowing exactly where we might be staying overnight. It really meant that dinner choices were very much pot luck - the only restaurants you knew of were those you’d driven past coming in to town or you could see from the hotel. Internet is great - although the adventure of finding a hotel and something to eat are gone, as pretty much everything about travel is now pre-planned. Still, there’s now the fun of trawling the web looking for eats , etc.
I don’t see the big deal here.
If you want to know, you can always pick up the phone and call the restaurant. They might even email you a menu, read it out loud to you, or (wait for it) even fax it to you.
Restaurants and diners did just fine before the Internet came along and Google made dining out less of an experiential experience and more of a judgmental expectation.
We’ve already discussed at length the various ways diners accessed information about restaurants in the pre-internet age, and none of them involved having to call the restaurant to have them read a menu to you over the phone.
and that’s why I mentioned it
No, you mentioned it because you were being contrary. Unless
has some other meaning.
If you mean calling them now, it’s kind of a big deal that many restaurants don’t have phones anymore and some of those that have phones don’t answer them.
I’m boggled by the “20- to 25-course tasting menu”. How can one have any appreciation for any of them when they must be tiny, and there are so many of them?
“This artisanal grape is organic and was picked at the peak of ripeness.”
“Your shrimp was line-caught by an 80-year old Vietnamese fisherman utilizing ancient techniques passed down through generations on equipment hand made by his grandfather.”
“Please enjoy your corn chip.”
Absolutely. Ive tried phoning places to make reservations for dinners at meetings (5-6 people, so not exactly anything special)
If they even have a phone, theres usually a message to contact them by text or Facebook, which they 100% never answer.
If I have to work that hard to give someone my money, Ill just give it to someone who acts not even like they want it…just doesnt make me feel like Im i conveniencing them with my very presence.
Which is ok.
Just don’t go. Plenty of other restaurants.
This isn’t like the DMV, where it’s basically a monopoly.
To be honest, I don’t really understand your question - where is the problem to eat many different flavors/small dishes and appreciating all of them. A tasting menu is served quite slowly over a longer period of time (many of our tasting menu take 3-5 hours).
As with so many things when it comes to food, it’s about personal preferences.
I’ve done tasting menus, but none were more than 7-9 courses tops, and none lasted more than 2 hours.
I could see getting fatigued 10-15 dishes in, both in regards to palate and … well, Sitzfleisch, TBH (I couldn’t think of an appropriate English term on the spot), but obviously enough folks — you included, enjoy them.
